Memorial Garden

CHRIST CHURCH MEMORIAL GARDEN

LabyrinthColumbarium Garden

Our Memorial Garden, located in our peaceful Church Courtyard, includes a Columbarium Wall, a Columbarium Garden, and a Labyrinth.

OUR COLUMBARIUM

The Columbarium Wall, built in 1998, has been fully subscribed. Recently, in order to continue our Columbarium ministry, we have installed a new Columbarium Garden – a beautifully landscaped garden incorporating the Angel statue by Jay Hall Carpenter. Beautiful flowering bushes and benches complete our peaceful garden. This new Columbarium Garden has sixty-seven niches. Most niches will hold two urns.

Columbarium Garden and Columbarium Wall

The Cremation of human bodies has been embraced by the Episcopal Church for many years as a proper and dignified way of treating the human body at the time of death. In recent years, cremation has increased in popularity. Our new garden allows Christ Church to continue to be the center of our major life events of baptism, confirmation, marriage, and burial. This setting provides a visible link to us in this lifetime between deceased Christians and their church body, enabling family and friends to pay their respects and refresh their remembrances frequently as a part of regular worship.
If you would like to purchase a niche, or if you would like additional information about our Columbarium Garden, please contact the church office (telephone 301-942-4673) or by email.

OUR LABYRINTH

Labyrinth

The Christ Church Labyrinth invites you to walk it in peaceful contemplation. While the path twists and turns back on itself many times, there is only one way to reach the center. This symbolizes a journey to a destination (like a pilgrimage to a holy site). Some people confuse a labyrinth and a maze – a maze is designed so that you will lose your way. A Labyrinth is designed so that you will find your way. A maze requires you to make choices. With a Labyrinth, the only choice is to walk it or not. A maze has dead ends. A Labyrinth has no dead ends or wrong turns – it is one path that guides you to the center and guides you back out. Our labyrinth can offer contemplative and transformational opportunities for those choosing to walk it.

There is no set ritual for walking a labyrinth (sometimes called the Walking Prayer). It is recommended that one enters slowly, calming and clearing the mind which may be done with a prayer or a chant. One focuses on the process of taking slow and deliberate steps; thinking about a prayer or spiritual question to contemplate while walking toward the center. Upon reaching the center, one pauses to reflect, pray, listen. One then begins the return journey (following the same path in reverse) praying and reflecting further.

A Labyrinth may be a path or prayer, a path of meditation. It may be a chance to slow down, a place to find strength, a place to find comfort from grief and loss.